Spider-Man 3

The biggest problem: Sand doesn't naturally form complex human shapes. To achieve realistic motion, animation supervisor Spencer Cook worked with sculptor Kent Jones to block out key poses in three dimensions. "Sand has certain characteristics that we're all familiar with," Stokdyk says. "If it's not wet, it just cascades down, creating mounds that have this 30-degree angle called the angle of repose. So when we put particle effects on top of our character animation, we had to relax the surface into those characteristic shapes."

The biggest problem: Sand doesn't naturally form complex human shapes. To achieve realistic motion, animation supervisor Spencer Cook worked with sculptor Kent Jones to block out key poses in three dimensions. "Sand has certain characteristics that we're all familiar with," Stokdyk says. "If it's not wet, it just cascades down, creating mounds that have this 30-degree angle called the angle of repose. So when we put particle effects on top of our character animation, we had to relax the surface into those characteristic shapes." (Imageworks)

The biggest problem: Sand doesn't naturally form complex human shapes. To achieve realistic motion, animation supervisor Spencer Cook worked with sculptor Kent Jones to block out key poses in three dimensions. "Sand has certain characteristics that we're all familiar with," Stokdyk says. "If it's not wet, it just cascades down, creating mounds that have this 30-degree angle called the angle of repose. So when we put particle effects on top of our character animation, we had to relax the surface into those characteristic shapes."Imageworks